10 SAP Administration Best Practices and Tidbits

Kehinde Eseyin (Systems Support Manager) posted 2/17/2009 | Comments (0)

The SAP system is a complex system and by implication its administration can be challenging
especially in large deployments. In this post, I present a number of best practices and tidbits that
are invaluable to SAP system administrators and which goes a long way to simplify SAP system
administrative tasks irrespective of the complexity or size of the implementation.
1. Documentation: Proper documentation simplifies administrative tasks. How to achieve a task
should be well documented. This should include the various steps to be taken and the correct
sequence. There is always a tendency to forget a very important step when performing routine
administrative task. Think about overwriting a file without making a backup and you now need to
restore back to a point before the overwriting. No matter how minute a task is, it is important to
have it documented. By so doing, it can be picked up by any trained personnel when you are
unavailable and the task can be done with little or no hassle.
2. Professional/Peer Networking: As an SAP administrator, you need to belong to fora where
technical SAP issues are discussed. It broadens your technical horizon and expands your skill sets.
Through such fora, you can make friends with whom you can discuss challenges on the job with
and probably get solutions without necessarily re-inventing the wheels. This is because such
individuals might have experienced such issues before. Attending SAP technical summits and
conferences such as SAPTECHED is also helpful. SAP Users Group (*SUG) exist in some localization;
it is beneficial to belong to such groups.
3. Safeguard the SAP System: The SAP system, been an enterprise system houses the
company wide data in most cases, hence the need to properly safeguard the system. Direct access
to the database should be highly prohibited and necessary controls must be in place to guide
against this. Network security must be very effective. Remote connection to the SAP system must
also be well controlled and access granted only when the need arises. Administration of the SAP
system must be centralized. Suffice to say that the SAP administration team must be abreast of
any work on the SAP system at any point in time.
4. Checklists: Because the administrative tasks that need to be performed on the SAP system are
enormous, it is best to have a checklist of these activities. The checklist guides you at ensuring
that all defined activities are performed and any observation can be noted and addressed in due
course. By this, you are unlikely to forget any activity by omission. You can develop checklists for
daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual administrative tasks.
5. Maintenance: The SAP environment is characterized by different application which includes
operating system, database system and enterprise system and third party application. These
applications are continuously improved and enhanced via upgrades, patches, service packs and
hot fixes. It is best for SAP administrator to apply these enhancements when they are released.
Furthermore, the SAP system runs on high end infrastructures such as servers and network
equipments. These facilities needs to be maintained based on defined schedule. Performing the
preventive maintenance of these equipment as at when due is key to ensuring that service is not
disrupted as result of equipments break down.
6. Disaster Recovery Plan: The disaster recovery plan is a set of activities that will be carried
out to restore service in the event of a disaster of any kind which can mean physical inaccessibility
to the server room which is the primary site. A disaster recovery plan must be well documented
and all users must be abreast of what to do in case of a disaster. The plan must be tested at

defined intervals to ensure that the plan is still relevant to the business case that justifies its
existence.
7. Incident Management: When user encounters problems with the system, experience has
shown that the system administrators are the first point of call. In an SAP environment, an incident
management system should exist to monitor user complaints and problem resolution or status at
any point in time. This complaint might be as mild as resetting users password. With an incident
management system in place, service calls can be well managed and progress monitored.
8. SAP System Isolation: Despite the fact that SAP system is an enterprise application that is
supposed to integrate all business units of an organization, companies still have one reason or the
other to run non SAP systems. In some cases, these non SAP systems are integrated with the SAP
system. However, it is best to isolate the SAP system from non SAP system. The SAP application
should be installed on a separate server different from other applications. This simplifies
administration and makes troubleshooting less difficult. Even the network infrastructure should be
isolated if possible. The SAP system can exist in a separate VLAN different from other systems.
9. Controlled Modification: The SAP administrator should not just make changes to the SAP
system without fully understanding the implication of such action. This also applies to making
changes to system parameter settings. There should be proper justification for making changes to
the system state.
10. Knowledge Database: It is good practice to keep a database of known issues and solutions.
Because the challenges of administering the SAP system are multi facet, it is very possible to
forget how a problem was resolved when it occurred. A knowledge database exists to serve as a
reference data center when a familiar problem re-occurs. Furthermore, the knowledge database
should be centrally managed. It enhances collaboration especially as it relates to issues and
corresponding solution documentation.

SAP Backup Cycle in an Oracle Database Environment

Kehinde Eseyin (Systems Support Manager) posted 2/18/2009 | Comments (0)
Just like in other systems, it is important to have a backup strategy in place. The SAP environment
is not an exception. Backup as it were helps to guide against data loss. When developing a backup
strategy, it is important to keep it as simple as possible. A number of parameters are considered
when developing a backup strategy. These include the size of the database, backup media,
frequency of backup, number of copies of backup, backup policy and backup cycle among others.
In this post, Id be taking a closer look at backup cycle in the context of the SAP system. Emphasis
will be on the connection of backup cycle with SAP recommended backup methods and strategies
in an Oracle environment.
The Backup cycle can be defined as the window within which you can keep backup on tape.
During this period, the tape is not overwritten. Suffice to say that the backup cycle defines the
tape retention period. Until the retention period elapses, these tapes cannot be reused. The
recommended backup cycle in an SAP system is 28 days.
Performing a complete online and offline backup is very pertinent. A complete backup backs up all
data in the database. It is recommended that you carry out a complete offline backup once in a
backup cycle. A direct relationship exists between the length of the backup cycle and the
frequency of complete database backup. Typically, a large number of complete database backup
tapes must be available and useable at any point in time in order to guide against data loss
especially when the last database backup is not useable.
Tape pool provides capabilities to manage tape allocation based on backup policies, backup types,
backup strategies and backup tools among others. The concept of tape pool is essential in the
management of backup cycle. At any point in time, sufficient tapes must be available in each tape
pool in order to cater for the entire backup cycle. This is because the backup tape for each pool
cannot be reused until the retention period is over, hence the need to have sufficient number of
tapes in a pool.
Following a full backup, it is possible to backup only data blocks that have changed since the last
full backup, this is called incremental backup. An obvious feature of incremental backup is that
there is reduction in the amount of data to be backed up, however, all data blocks are read. The
downside of an incremental backup is that it is not useable if the associated full backup is no
longer available or has been overwritten. When using incremental backup, it is recommended to
perform at least one full backup per week and four full backup per backup cycle.
In a situation where you use tape stations with hardware compression and you want RMAN to
consider a compression rate when creating save sets with appropriate sizes to match the tape
size, you need to carry out a preparation run. Also, a preparation run is performed when a RMAN
based backup is intended to form save sets with more than one member. File assignment to save
sets cannot be managed manually; it can only be changed by carrying out a new preparation run.
It is recommended to perform a preparation run once per backup cycle.
When using BRBACKUP, it is possible to calculate the space needed to store compressed files on
tape using appropriate compression rates. You need to use an accurate compression rate of the
database files before the backup tool can determine the quantity of data to be stored on one tape
after compression. Furthermore, it guarantees that the specified tape size is not exceeded and
ensures that there is proper distribution of files across the tapes. Compression rates should be
updated at least once per backup cycle.
In order to recover from failure completely and when using BR*Tools for backup operations, it
might be necessary to have a comprehensive backup of all files, both SAP and non SAP files at any
point in time. Although, in most environments, these file are backed up at operating system level,

it is good idea to back them up at least once per backup cycle. The affected files include but not
limited to operating system, SAP executable, SAP interface, SAP archiving and Oracle software
directories.

Overview of SAP Administration Tools in an

Oracle Database Environment
Kehinde Eseyin (Systems Support Manager) posted 2/18/2009 | Comments (0)
Oracle is one of the preferred databases on which the SAP system sits. SAP has some standard
programs to simplify database administration. These include BRBACKUP, BRARCHIVE,
BRRESTORE, BRRECOVER, BRSPACE, BRCONNECT, BRGUI and BRTOOLS.
BRBACKUP is used to perform the backup of data files, control files and online redo log files.
BRARCHIVE is used to perform the backup of offline redo log files.
BRRESTORE is used to perform the restoration of files backed up by BRBACKUP and BRARCHIVE.
These includes data files, control files, online redo log files and offline redo log files.
BRRECOVER is used to perform database restore and recovery.
BRSPACE is used to manage instances, space and reorganization.
BRCONNECT is used to perform certain administrative tasks such as updating statistics, changing
passwords and performing database checks.
BRGUI is a GUI environment for BRTOOLS.
BRTOOLS is an interactive interface that displays menu from which BR*TOOLS programs are called.
In subsequent posting, I intend to explicitly discuss these individual tools.